However, after oogling at the gaming possibilities on a shiny macbook pro or imac, I pondered about game updates and multiplayer... over the internet.

What I am trying to get at here is the possibility of viruses. Now I know all about virii, spyware, etc. and how to protect against it. Just whack on free AVG anti-virus and get adaware and microsoft anti-spyware (which is surprisingly effective). However, you can never be completely protected from virii on windows. I am speaking from personal experience, with some nasty spyware embedded on the machine I am currently typing from. I fear the same for windows on mac. It will be exactly the same because it will be running natively. The only way as far as I know to be fairly safe is for a virtualisation of windows. I'd hate for a virus to damage the mac files on the other partition!

And another thing - windows rot. Will we get the same degrading of performance over time without serious and eventaual overhauls? I wonder...

How will these things affect a switcher? I still think people will switch to a mac just for the ease of having one very nice loking machine run all of the programs that need running.

I'm hoping for a iPod like effect. People choose iPods in the begining for their look and function. Would you rather have an iPod or __insert_mp3_player_. The consumers when with the sleek and user friendly ipod.

With the Windows compatibility thrown out of the window, I assume many consumers will make their decisions on which looks better. We all know who will win that arguement.

I'm sure the gaming will not be the greatest until all the qerks get worked out with the multimedia and video drivers.

I plan on installing bootcamp tonight and brining my mini to work and join the corporate domain tomorrow.

BTW: I use AVG as well great free antivirus, and Microsoft Defender (Antispyware graduated)_________________

If you use the Windows side of a dual boot for internet, expect all of the same problems that you would get on a Windows box and the solutions are the same. But the good news is that these problems won't affect the Mac side. I will entually buy an Intel Mini and I will use Windows on it for some programs, but they won't be internet. I currently use Virtual PC for a few things on my Macs, but I rarely if ever connect with it to the internet and as a result, I never experience the problems the PC users do with their machines. However, your options with Windows on an Intel Mac are much better because you don't require an emulator, which slows down performance considerably._________________Mini 1 (2012): 2.3 ghz Core i7; 10gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500gb Seagate XT
Mini 2 (2009): 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8gb RAM, 500gb SSD running Ubuntu
Also a 13" MacBook Air, 21.5" i5 iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu, openSUSE & Crunchbang

What would be really cool is if you could use Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection to connect to the Windows OS on the same machine! Just a though, however it would be impossible considering only 1 boots.

I wouldn't access the internet with Windows XP on a Mac. This is unfortunate for the online gamers. Hopefully Vista offers effective yet simple security. I wouldn't hold my breath though. The world has been waiting for M$ to get their act together since Windows '95.

I gave Boot Camp a whirl last night, mostly out of curiosity. I mean, I just switched so why would I want to put Windows on my Mac when I was so desperate to get away from it?

I was very impressed with how Boot Camp guided me through the entire, glitchless process and Windows XP ran very nicely on my Mac Mini. I played for a while and then zapped the partition.

It was only after I zapped the Windows partition that I realised that this might actually be a good way of me using Photoshop CS2 until CS3 comes up with the Universal Binary goods - I mean, they've said second quarter of 2007 or something - that's a year away yet.

So, it could be I use Boot Camp for running PS CS2, if I format the Windows partition as FAT32 I can read and write to it from OS X which will be useful. Sure, I could just carry on using my old Windows box, but it's big and noisy and power hungry and I want it out of the way. I also prefer the idea of having all my files on one machine, even if under two operating systems - makes it easier to find stuff and to back it all up.

One other possibility has also arisen. I just noticed that Parallels Workstation is now available in Beta for Intel Macs. I think I might give that a try tonight before committing myself to using Boot Camp.

Or of course I could just soldier on with CS2 under Rosetta - but with both these other options seeming quite viable then I really do think I'll wait for CS3 before switching my license from Windows to Mac._________________My Flickr

One other possibility has also arisen. I just noticed that Parallels Workstation is now available in Beta for Intel Macs. I think I might give that a try tonight before committing myself to using Boot Camp.

I just installed Parallels with Ubuntu linux on it, just to see how it works. All seems well. Installation of Parallels and Ubuntu both went completely as exoected.

I will say that the bugger is CPU hungry. Doing next to nothing, I'm sitting at nearly 50% cpu useage on both cores on my Mini Core Duo. I don't know if that would be true with XP or another flavor of Linux, but it's an issue if I were planning on spending a lot of time in the virtual session.

It's only been running for 20 minutes, so I only have first impressions to go on, but Parallels does work... time will tell how well!